Biodiversity and Climate Change Part II- WNY Primacy

Biodiversity and Climate Change Part 2

WNY Primacy

by Jay Burney

Preserve, Protect, and Defend, -biodiversity

In part 1, we explored that the fundamental cause of human created climate change is the eradication of biodiversity.  Eradication is enriched by the economic exploitation and the characterization of these resources as commodities.   The harvesting of forests and the use of our waterways as waste repositories have dealt fundamental blows to our planets ability to support life.  The ecological services provided by ecosystems are marginalized as economic “externalities”.  Ecological and social contexts have to be woven in to the sustainability equation with the real bottom line being biodiversity. A purely economic definition of “sustainable development” remains an oxymoron.  We have to change this.

The potential negative impact on our region’s biodiversity by climate change is substantial.  The positive contribution to atmospheric stability by biodiversity is fundamental science.  We must recognize the overwhelming significance of habitat destruction and the exploitation of natural resources. This is a very addressable strategy.

We Can

-Rethink, redefine, and react to fundamental causes of climate change. This will characterize the value of our current generations. 

-Identify, catalog and reverse the unprecedented human evisceration of biodiversity.

WNY is located in one of the most historically biodiverse regions on the planet. Our Great Lakes, rivers, creeks, streams, wetlands, forests, uplands, and meadows are vital components of a rapidly vanishing bioregion of global significance.

Although most of our natural assets have been urbanized or seriously altered by human activity there remain significant areas that are ecologically productive.   Most areas can return to ecological productivity with planning and investment.

The Sweetwater Seas

The Great Lakes contain nearly 1/5^th of the world’s fresh surface water.

The Great Lakes Basin is a bioregion that supports nearly 10% of the US population and 25% of the population of Canada.  Urbanization, industry and agriculture have diminished our ecologically productive capacity.

Our waters are a valuable asset.   They face growing threats championed by economic activities with a laser focus on growth and development.  We can enhance our planets capacity to support life and atmospheric stability if we continue to provide opportunities for biodiversity.  But only if we engage conservation as a primary first line of defense.

One of the most significant threats to our waters involves waste treatment and disposal. For example, just seven sewer authorities throughout the Great Lakes including the Buffalo Sewer Authority (BSA) discharge almost 20 billion gallons of untreated sewerage and storm water through Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs). The BSA is responsible for releasing almost 2 billion gallons per year of our untreated material into the Niagara River, Buffalo River, Black Rock Canal, Scajaquada Creek and 52 other permitted outfalls. 

The good news is that currently the BSA has a 19 year plan developed in conjunction with RiverKeeper to address CSOs.  The BSA is one of the only sewer authorities in the Great Lakes with a “Green Infrastructure Plan”.  It comes with a $500 million plus price tag. 

The bad news is that the BSA plan is not enough and there is no guarantee that the money can be raised. Our culture is in a current suicidal cycle of downplaying infrastructure investments of this kind. Maybe we will build a new football stadium instead.

The bad news goes deeper with the BSA. It is a “self-permitting” Public Authority.  The BSA alone determines and monitors what it processes through its system.  This is not a unique situation. The political and economic underpinnings of a Public Authority give the BSA extraordinary legal powers and can keep public scrutiny at arms length. Contentious issues involving permitting disclosures  result.

-The BSA is the sole authority for Buffalo Pollution Discharge Elimination System Permits (BPDES), issues permits for “Trucked in Waste” and permits for “Temporary Discharges”.

While the BSA is on record as saying that it is doing nothing illegal, permit applicants “self-identify” the materials that they are seeking to discharge into the lake.

This means that the potential for deliberate or unintentional misidentification of materials permitted for release by private entities is there. Public scrutiny of these permits does not include public review of permit applications prior to permitting.

We would be shocked, just shocked if illegal activity takes place, but the potential is there.

A recent example of the kinds of problems that exist under this current system include an investigation of fracking wastewater permits undertaken by ArtVoice in the late winter of 2011-12.

http://artvoice.com/issues/v10n6/week_in_review/seven_days

Hydrofracking

Despite all the industry hype about the environmental benefits of a transitional natural gas economy, one of the least reported aspects of hydrofracking is that the activity releases huge amounts of methane, a less reported but highly significant greenhouse gas. Coupled with the documented consequences of using billions of gallons of water, concocting and injecting proprietary chemical soups that are highly toxic that appear in groundwater, aquifers, and other drinking water sources, hydrofracking is not the answer. Even on a purely economic basis hydrofracking does not live up to industry hype. Mix in the development of landscapes eaten by roads, well heads, lagoons, and other infrastructure demands, it becomes more clear that this energy strategy does not support biodiversity and is instead another nail in the coffin of atmospheric stability.

Land Use

Land use models that transcend traditional economic factors are being developed locally. Riverkeeper has  introduced a GIS land use database focusing on watersheds. This groundbreaking approach to identifying value is transforming our ability to promote conservation and protection. Other local working groups are focusing on expanding the concept and identifying areas that have  economically quantifiable ecological services values such as intact or partially intact ecosystems on both public and private lands. County Forests, parkland, land banks, abandoned farmland, trails, wood lots, and other areas are strategic places.

A new database approach could form the basis of quantifiable analysis of critical habitat and biodiversity generators. The objective is to create a tool to build upon traditional land use concepts that help citizens and governments determine planning, zoning, conservation, and land protection. One potential outcome is incentives that would target keeping public and private land ecologically productive.

Buffalo Waterfront

We can recreate an ecologically productive waterfront by avoiding industrial, commercial or inappropriate mixed use development.  Only if we make significant public investments does this land become valuable land for the developers. Instead of driving profits just to the developers, lets invest in an economic plan that benefits a broader spectrum.

By concentrating development on the downtown side of the river and harbor and we will build a better city. The outer harbor should remain as open space with public access. How about a National Marine Sanctuary just off shore? An economic plan that encourages conservation through recreational and tourism will make us wealthier as a sustainable community.

Urban Greenscaping

Community owned lands such as parks and streetscapes can contribute to biodiversity. If you have a yard you can make a difference.  Here is how- Learn about the kinds of beneficial animals such as pollinators, local birds, and butterflies that depend on native plants, and then landscape with those plants! There are plenty of local organizations that promote this kind of gardening. One word of caution, -avoid using native plants in rain gardens that collect street runoff.  Toxic materials from automobiles, lawn chemicals and other poisons can accumulate in these gardens and if you are using plants that attract native butterflies, birds, and bees, they will absorb the toxins, which can be counterproductive.

Boom and BUST

GreenWatch

Boom and BUST

The Lies About Jobs

The legacy news media has a lot to say about the positive impacts of natural gas development in New York State. Like many others, you may be convinced that the economic upside of shale gas includes many jobs and a resurgent economy.

You are very wrong if you believe this. Most of the economic projections come from industry oriented propaganda. Industry that stands to profit dramatically if New York State allows hydrofracking. Not by creating jobs, not by building local economies, but by extracting wealth and leaving behind a legacy of destruction.

Last summer the New York State DEC published a draft generic supplemental environmental impact statement that was paid for by taxpayer dollars. A local WNY company, Ecology and Environment (E&E), which has extensive ties to the oil and gas industry produced an economic assessment that was contained in the publically funded document.  In it E&E stated that an average NYS shale gas development scenario would bring 53,969 jobs.  Food and Water Watch, an organization opposed to hydrofracking published an independent analysis last November entitled “New York State Exaggerated Potential Job Creation from Shale Gas Development.”  It states that the E&E projections are “deeply flawed“ and that “in the first year of an average scenario only 195 new jobs would be created for NYS residents and that “after 10 years only 600 jobs”. After the 10^th year there would be almost no more new jobs created”.

The E&E analysis mirrors industry claims and has been repeated over and over while the Food and Water Watch report, and many other independent assessments that support the critical analysis have been ignored by legacy media. “Truth” and fair and balanced information is a commodity bought and sold to the highest bidder and delivered into your living room by uncritical “news” operations that have a bottom line that does not often include investigation, analysis, or even critical thinking.

Boom

Generally speaking, the gas boom can be characterized as a short term accelerated production cycle. The initial development activities are massive and carry many real and environmental costs that are borne by the local communities.  Impacted communities are always unprepared to adjust to increased and cyclic populations. North Dakota experienced a significant boom due to natural gas operations in 2011 and has also experienced a dark side.

Williston ND saw its population grow from 14,500 people in 2010, to over 20,000 in late 2011. According to a Bloomberg report published this last January, “North Dakota Oil Boom Brings Blight with Growth as Costs Soar” the sudden boom created a housing shortage.  Rents for a two-bedroom home without utilities skyrocketed from $350 a month to over $2,000.  Five hotels and 1,200 new apartments are being built.  Meanwhile some workers and their families are living in their cars, while others are gathering in what are being called “man-camps” – temporary shelters including tents and trailers. Some counties have banned these man camps citing lack of sewer, electrical, and water systems, increased crime rates, and increased prostitution among other social issues.

While the Oil and Gas industry provided Williston with $1.5 million “oil extraction tax”  in 2011, infrastructure costs continue to soar.   The community is looking at spending $87 million to provide three new schools for the approximate 1,500 new students this year. This is an approximate 57% increase in what the local schools were designed to hold. Roads designed to handle 10 tractor trailer trucks a day now are being used by over 800 a day. Montrail County’s road system which has been so completely overburdened by the enormous truck traffic needs $600 million just to keep the roads open. Calls to Montrail County volunteer ambulance and fire services has tripled since 2009.

Bust and Despair

Imagine a ghost town with its ruined and abandoned buildings and streets inhabited by the wretched ghosts of its former residents.  This well-known scenario is based on oil and mineral extractions.  The rush and boom is always followed by collapse. Collapse stays forever. Whatever residents remain pay for the boom with expansive poverty and the inability to maintain basic services and infrastructure. The resultant cultural collapse is a Santorum (google it) scenario that we should all be prepared for if NYS allows fracking.

The long-term bust is characterized by broken and impoverished rural communities. According to Chris Burger of the Sierra Club Atlantic Gas Task Force one of the principle downsides of economic impacts in a fracking area is a loss of diversity of jobs.  Tourism and recreation jobs almost completely disappear as those industries are devastated by the blight caused by gas drilling sites and infrastructure.  Agriculture is seriously impacted by drilling activities and studies have shown that in communities that allow fracking up to 50% of family owned farms are put out of business.

A Cornell University report “Marcellus Shale Gas Drilling: What does it mean for Economic Development concludes that short term boom is always followed by long term bust. Good long-term jobs are not created in drilling communities. Other good jobs migrate away.  Economic diversity declines, as communities cannot attract investment from non-extraction industries.

Add these economic development lies on top of the catastrophic environmental issues created when the waters that we depend on become contaminated, and undrinkable. Your drinking water will be affected. Add this to the costs of the remediation, the lack of remediation, and the to costs of the consequences of human health impacts. Add these inevitable consequences of the depravation and predation by the few that will gain economically to the many that will suffer long term economic consequences and you have to wonder how on earth, we has a culture can have the political, social, or moral will to allow hydrofracking.

Revised Extreme Environmentalists, Fracking, Spills, Disasters, and the Freemarket

Language Counts
A Call for Radical Accountability

 -by Jay Burney

In the years leading up to the Macondo/Deep Water Horizon well explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, arguably the greatest human caused environmental disaster in history, the world was silent on the environment. For almost a decade the media downplayed environmentalism as an extremely obstructionist strategy preventing economic growth. Climate change deniers grabbed the headlines. The devastations of the energy industry were obscured by the American obsession with war and the latest Hollywood sex scandals. Media abandoned it’s seasoned reporters and went with industry “talking points” to construct storylines that had no critical basis.

Even after the ongoing disaster all but destroyed the ecosystems and human lifestyles of the Gulf, many still refer to the disaster as a “spill”. This was no spill.

This is a huge disaster that was caused by a deceptive industry intent on cutting corners and squeezing the most profit possible out of dangerous operations. Whenever you hear the phrase “Gulf Oil Spill”, you probably downplay the reality and enormity of this planet changing disaster.  This week, BP went on trial for the damages caused by the Macondo blow out that caused 11 direct human deaths and untold damages to the ecology and economic future of the Gulf Coast.

The New York State hydrofracking issue has brought an oil and gas industry sponsored hate campaign replete with a barrage of partisan and divisive language crafting. The phrase engineering is designed to incite passion against those that urge a cautious approach to hydrofracking.

This includes economic arguments that urge us to believe unconditionally that jobs and economic growth are totally dependent upon the industries ability to extract wealth for private gain from among other places, public properties and with public money.  The truth is much further away.

An industry oriented projection analysis of fracking affiliated New York State jobs has been repeated by the New York State DEC as it seeks to justify hydrofracking operations in the state.  DEC consultants,  -a local WNY company with strong ties to the oil and gas industry, Ecology an Environment, wrote in a taxpayer funded report that an average NYS shale gas development scenario would bring 53,969 jobs.  Food and Water Watch, an activist organization opposed to hydrofracking published an independent analysis last November entitled “New York State Exaggerated Potential Job Creation from Shale Gas Development.”  It states that the Ecology and Environment projections are “deeply flawed”.  It states that “in the first year of an average scenario only 195 new jobs would be created for NYS residents, and that after 10 years only 600 jobs. After the 10^th year there would be almost no more new jobs created”.

There are other substantial economic, environmental, and social impacts. These include the probable boom and bust cycle that accompanies most natural resources extraction operations.  Communities should experience extraordinary downsides once the fracking operations cease.  These include significant infrastructure costs including roads and maintenance, damage to fragile and valuable ecological systems, and impacts on human health and well-being.

Principle concerns made by anti-fracking activists point to a consequential lack of science that substantiates that fracking safe.  There is more than enough evidence to suggest that both the process and chemicals injected into the earth permanently contaminates water that all life depends upon. This effects humans, animals, and agriculture and food production. There is significant science that clearly links chemicals used in hydrofracking with human disease including a wide array of cancers.  This business is as serious and as costly as death.

Many of these impacts are considered “externalities” by our traditional way of economic accounting. This means that many of the fracking costs will not be paid for by the industry and instead will be born by individuals and taxpayers. 

One of the principle issues is that many of the chemicals used are proprietary, which means that they are kept secret by the industry. While we know mostly what the chemicals are, by hiding the truth behind specific proprietary disclosures, the industry can disingenuously argue that chemicals found in well water and aquifers cannot be traced to the drilling sources.   In addition, gas and oil extractions are legally exempt from important parts of the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the Clean Water Act, the Community Right to Know Act, the Clean Air Act, The National Environmental Policy Act, and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act. This Bush/Cheney era energy legislation enjoyed bipartisan support. Accountability and the ultimate health costs are protected by a complex and costly legal system that ensures that costs will be borne by a wider society, -the taxpayers and individuals effected. These corporate entitlements are outrageous and dangerous.

 As of this writing the USEPA is at least a year away from releasing its science on the safety of hydrofracking.  Early drafts clearly point out that that contaminated well waters and aquifers are directly linked to fracking operations. This brings us to the common sense fact that the “economic impact” of gas extraction may be far from positive. Individuals that have testified against fracking include doctors, ecologists, scientists, economists, oil and gas extraction specialists, and DEC technical staff whom say that they do not have nearly enough resources to safely oversee fracking.

When the federal government states that they are considering requiring gas drilling companies to disclose proprietary formulas used in frack liquids, the question has to be “disclose to whom?” Unless this is fully disclosed to the public there is no possible way that the public will be safe.  Nor can the public make informed decisions about fracking safety. Many, including those inside government claim that the government does not have the resources to oversee the many aspects of fracking. It is not hard to imagine that as the size of our government recedes, the ability of oversight will also diminish.  If the formulas are disclosed to the public, we certainly will find a way to scrutinize, analyze and ultimately make informed and transparent choices about the activities, processes and impacts of this very dangerous industry and its economic, environmental and social consequences.

Environmental activists of all stripes have been and continue to be targets of the campaign to disarm citizen knowledge. This assault is led by industry apologists and death merchants, many of which stand to make huge profits if we the people allow fracking.

Industry apologists continue to target citizen awareness.

In early December Fred Dicker, the longtime state editor of the NY Post went off on “extreme environmentalists on a Fox TV broadcast suggesting that those that oppose fracking are radicals, use hyperbole, are extremists and uninformed.  Local news accounts from our “legacy” TV and print outlets carry that same message.  More often than not the media carries uncritical accounts of hydrofracking issues from the point of view of the businesses that have the money to spend underwriting the local “news” operations. I am sure that most of you think that hydrofracking in NYS is good for our economy and will provide lots of jobs.

The propaganda greased by the big companies goes all the way to the Governors office, and beyond.  Some of the justifications go beyond the pale.

Recently, Republican presidential candidate Rick (google it) Santorum, whom seems to believe that his radical brand of fundamental Christianity should guide our political/economic/social destiny, suggested that God made planet earth in order to allow humans to exploit its natural resources. He said that “radical environmentalists believe that man should protect the earth”.  He said, “That is a phony ideal, we are not here to protect the earth”, and that “the objective is man, not environment”.  How does one even begin to address this exasperating disconnect?  Without a healthy earth, a healthy planet, there is no “man”. If we poison the planet with phony idealism such as Santorums, humans disappear. Its that simple.  This election may very well be about the ability of humans to survive.

Activists that are willing to go against the grain and stand up for ecological integrity, clean water and air, and fight with their words and actions against a monstrous corporate financial and propaganda machine should be considered heros and patriots. Instead some of the mainstream media parrots the industry talking points and portrays activists in as mislead, selfish, obstructionists, socialists, or worse eco-terrorists. That last label puts individuals and organizations that oppose fracking and are willing to say so on a list of potential criminals and the consequences are becoming increasingly dire.

Just because someone is so green that the trees hug them doesn’t or shouldn’t mean that they are extremists. Why aren’t the profiteers and their spokespuppets that use disinformation, incomplete half-truths and quick decision-making that masques economic, environmental, and social truths considered the extremists? Who are the criminals here?

Set Out

A Call for Radical Accountability

The first order of business is to ban fracking.

Beyond that we should make the industry be totally accountable by

-Revisiting the federal exemptions from environmental and community protections.

-Make the industry pay for independent analysis.

It is time that we adopt a newly emerged from the “Occupy Movement concept”- "Radical Accountability".

Lets take the promises of jobs and safety from of the industry and codify them, with financial incentives. For instance, if the state is not going to wait for the science, do the health analysis, or conduct full economic evaluations, make the profiteers accountable by demanding that corporate entitlements be incentivized by:

-A public accountability panel with each appointee and no members or their families linked to industry hydrofracking profits. The independent panel must be be funded by the private sector and will include a privately financed fund to independently evaluate health and economic impacts of hydrofracking in NYS.

-Full public disclosure of chemicals used, to include tracers on the chemicals and substances used at each site, so that when they appear in water, they can be sourced.

-Adequate private financed bonding (A minimum $50 million bond for each well) for potential public damages.  Let the industry bear the costs, not society. Let the freemarket decide! Make the externalities internal transparent costs.

-Publically disclosed job guarantees linked to every individual well and the aggregate that includes penalties for nonperformance, and under performance. Negotiate job creation contracts in public, and be financially incentivized and accountable if they turn out not to be true.

Without these actions, the public takes all the risks, there is no free market and the corporate entitlements will continue to eviscerate the 99%.  

Without these actions we cannot find a way to protect our environment, and not to put too fine a point on it, but without ecosystems there is no economy.

Language Counts, The Job Creators

From January 2012


 -by Jay Burney

It seems that the elimination of a sophisticated consumer class is profitable. Today, the worker no longer counts. Wall Street schemes and corporate entitlements that come from fleecing the public by endless wars and secret bailouts are the wealth creators.  

It would be nice if we could return to a time when public investments in good job creation were more fundamental to a successful economy.  As the world teeters on financial collapse created by speculators and their mouthpieces represented by governments and most elected officials, it would seem that a return to a time when wealth and quality of life for the masses will count. But we will not get there without a fight and that starts with critical thinking. it seems that this is a struggle that the 1% don’t want you to engage in. And up until recently, many of us have not. Instead we acquiesce to the messaging of the 1% streamed constantly into our minds by the wholly owned by the 1% mainstream media. They do not want us to think, or act, or find a sustainable future that works for everyone.

Unfortunately in this era of privatization, public investments in jobs must first pass the test of maximum profitability for the “job creators.”  The privatization of government services more often than not includes more costs to the taxpayer, smaller wages and benefits for the jobholder, and a profit margin that distinguishes government and private sector business models.  

The big lie that we often fall for is the false equivalency of running government like business. Running a business is not like running a government. Government does not have to profit, it only has to break even to be efficient.  Breaking even, without the privatization costs, can also result in tax reductions.  When we think of eliminating waste and inefficiency in government why don’t we target the waste of taxpayer dollars that goes toward maximizing profits for the private sector?  These entitlements dollars contribute to a decline in job and income opportunities and a decline in the consumer class. We pay more, get less, and dance blindly to the fallacious tune of the value added of privatized services. These privatization and profit strategies have contributed to the increasing costs of military spending, health services, education, and virtually every service that government contributes to protecting society.  After more than a decade of these investments, American jobs have declined in numbers, and in the real values of wages, and benefits.

Accountability also takes a huge hit with privatization. Once former government services are privatized it is much more difficult to access financial and other records that were once covered by things like the Freedom of Information Act and the Freedom on Information Law. We are certainly hearing about corporate abuses from lost money in Iraq to the secret and hidden transactions involving the Wall Street and Bank bailouts, but we are not hearing enough. Even Julian Assange and his Wiki leaks are not shining enough light on where trillions of American taxpayer money has disappeared to in the last few years.

When the Bush tax cuts first took effect in 2003, the unemployment rate was 6.2%. Now the unemployment rate is over 9%.  Americans lost 8 million jobs in 2008-09 despite the continuation of those tax loopholes for the very rich. Many of the new jobs are minimum wage and lack benefits and protections of, say, uninionized or government workers. 

Fading Republican Presidential candidate Rick Perry, Governor of Texas touts his job creation statistics in Texas claiming about 1/3 of the jobs created in America since  2008 were in Texas. He espouses a conservative and highly deceptive cut taxes to the wealthy “job creators” political invention to pander to the nattering nabobs.

But according to an article in the US News Weekly, all of the net job creation in Texas were government sector jobs, which have totaled about 115,000 while the private sector had a net loss of 40,000 jobs. In addition immigration to Texas from Mexico has boosted consumerism, which has led to more local jobs.  However many of those jobs have been in the health care sector, notoriously low paying jobs and fully 10% of all hourly Texan jobs pay minimum wage or less. This is above the national average. And lets not forget, under Perry Texas has a $27 billion deficit last year.

Perry’s Texas dream is to create an army of minimum wage earners, which will allow wealthy corporations to get more wealthy. Is this really a vision of prosperity or will it lead America to becoming a third world nation?

Perry is the tip of the spear that represents the oligarchy’s attack on the American Dream.

“Job creator” is another phrase cooked up by Frank Luntz, the republican opinion maker. He urges pundits to shy away from fuzzy terms such as “entrepreneurs” and instead go for the soul searing gut-stirring phrase that explodes at the center of our reptilian brain. You know what a job is, and you will be instinctively attracted to supporting the job creator. Even if the creator is a myth.

Almost exclusively  “job creator” schemes focus on taxpayer subsidies to developers and companies that demand substantial economic incentives. 

The altercations often played out in a compliant and uncritical media can inspire hand wringing passions of all levels of media. The performances and sweaty ministrations are attention getters (audience builders), and often serve the profit takers, which fund the media makers. 

Sadly and more often than not, they are misleading, disingenuous, and are served up uncritically on a talking points agenda that avoids any deep thinking or context. Such is the condition of the intellectual integrity of the mainstream and local media today. Most reporters and editors do not have an agenda that involves critical analysis.

Accountability
Lack of accountability takes hits in more than just the privatization schemes.  As we downsize our elected representation Lobbyists that pay for government decisions find it easier and more cost effective to buy influence.  It is a lot easier to corrupt one elected official than ten. And I bet you think that smaller governments save you money?  Lobbyists and corrupted officials simply do not want daylight the jacking of public money. 

The devil is always in the details. Scrutiny and critical analysis are the keys to accountability and that is supposed to count when it comes to public spending. Tools like the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) are supposed to help decision makers and the public analyze the real costs and values of public investments and private sector development. And yet in the past decade lawmakers have detoothed SEQRA to the point that it is almost useless for these purposes.

Take, for example, last years Verizon proposal to build what they intimated would be the “world’s largest data center” at Somerset in Niagara County. Cheerleaders for this project including NYS Senator Maziarz, the Niagara County IDA, local politicians, and the local media that yelled loudly that 200 “well-paying” jobs would be created and that the overall economic development impact in our region would be transformational. This kind of language counts. Most of the local media hyperventilated with the story. Critical analysis was beyond the means and intent of the nightly news. A perfect scenario for picking the publics pockets. “Just do it” was the overwhelming cry from editorial pages, letters, pundits and online commenters, often anonymous. 

A slightly more sobering and analytical account was presented in an article in November 2010, by the now former News reporter James Heaney. It did not get much attention. He explained that “in return taxpayers would provide Verizon sales and property tax rebates totaling $518 million. Additional discounted power would bring Verizon $96 million over 15 years. Heaney concluded, “The price tag for each job is $3.1 million.” Language counts. That is a lot of money. 

Heaney's detailed article provided an analysis of the lasting economic impacts and just how the public money would flow into the private coffers of Verizon, an international conglomerate ranked 16 in the Fortune 500 with annual revenue of $106.6 billion in 2010. Among other things Heaney’s investigation concluded that “data centers are not regarded as significant economic engines” and “are at the lower end of the spectrum” for economic development. Hmmm. Unless you caught Heaney’s article, I bet you never heard that.

What Heaney may not have known, and which was reported by Verizon to the Niagara County IDA as early as September is that the project would only result in 30 jobs by the end of the second year and that no other jobs may be created beyond this pilot phase. This was not the figure that the media or the cheerleaders used. There was not a reduction in the ask for public investment. That means that the cost per job was actually closer to $20 million per job.

Here are a few other things that you might not know.

Senator Masiarz, an aggressive advocate of the project, pushed a fast tracking of a rezoning of the property that Verizon wanted.  Without the fast tracking, Verizon threatened publically to abandon the project.  The Senator continuously used the 200 jobs chacterization despite his probable knowledge of the 30 jobs reality.

Fast tracking means avoiding public scrutiny of important details through SEQRA. SEQRA mandates that a community, including public decision makers, fully evaluate the environmental, social, and economic impacts of a project on certain rezoning requests. SEQRA allows time to develop and analyze information including an analysis of claims made by the party seeking to develop the project. In this case, as is the case often in major developments, the public input process was sped up and a “negative-declaration” was issued. A “neg-dek” states that there is no significant environmental, economic, or social consequence and no further scrutiny is required. This makes it seem like there is no harm possible from the development. Language counts.

However, there were some important public issues to consider. The 160 acres property in question is owned by AES, which also owns the adjacent 675-megawatt coal-fired generating plant as well as 163 other coal facilities worldwide. Did we mention that data centers such as the proposed Verizon center are huge consumers of electricity? Are there renewable energy/carbon footprint considerations to evaluate?

The property was originally zoned as “agricultural”.  It was changed to “industrial”. In addition it was state/county certified farmland, which is supposed to give it additional protection against non-agricultural purposes. This is important in a world of vanishing cropland. 

Are there additional infrastructure costs such as roadway, sewer, and other services that would have to be borne by the taxpayer? How would the zoning change and the development effect the property prices and use of adjacent land?

Do you think that there is a justifiable reason to scrutinize the carbon footprint and social and economic consequences of this project?  Is there any potential harm to the taxpayer or residents? The neg-dek says no.

The project was fast-tracked. Within weeks the Somerset Town Board approved the zoning changes. NYPA approved the gift of power. The next day, Verizon announced that it had decided to phase the development and in for the time being it was going to reduce the size of the project. This would eliminate two of the three gigantic buildings that it had proposed. Verizon said that it would wait years to determine the viability of additional development. 

Maziarz as it turns out has a long-term relationship with AES, the owner of the Property that Verizon sought, and Verizon. According to reported election records between March of 2008 and September of 2010, the Committee to Elect Masiarz State Senate received contributions totaling $26,500 from the two personcorporations.